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When in standby on battery power, the ThinkPad will not enter hibernation mode automatically via the timer. If, for example, on battery power, you have your ThinkPad set to suspend in 5 minutes and hibernation after 15 minutes, the machine will enter standby at 5 minutes but will not enter hibernation after 15.

Affected Configurations

Any of the following ThinkPad systems running the Windows Vista and XP operating system :

ThinkPad R60

ThinkPad R61

ThinkPad T60

ThinkPad T61

ThinkPad X60

ThinkPad X60 Tablet

ThinkPad X61

ThinkPad X61 Tablet

ThinkPad Z60

ThinkPad Z61

ThinkPad R400

ThinkPad R500

ThinkPad SL series

ThinkPad T400

ThinkPad T500

ThinkPad X200

ThinkPad X200 Tablet

ThinkPad X300

ThinkPad X301

ThinkPad W500

ThinkPad W700

Solution

This is normal behavior. When entering hibernation, the contents of system memory are written to a file on the hard drive. The size of this file will approximately equal the amount of installed memory on the machine and it may take over a minute to write this data to the drive. If the ThinkPad were being carried while in standby and the hibernation timer became active, the drive could be written to while the system is being jostled.

Active Protection can guard against this but could also prevent the system from entering hibernation. If you prefer to have your ThinkPad go into hibernation on battery, rather than standby, set the hibernation timer to a lower value than the standby timer.